Читать книгу Breaking Point - Lindsay McKenna - Страница 9

CHAPTER TWO

“THERE ARE A LOT of women in here,” Bay noted as they sat opposite from each other at a long, wooden table at the busy chow hall. The noise was high, a lot of laughter, ribbing and joking going around.

Gabe nodded, glad to get a plate of eggs, bacon, toast and grits. “You see that group of ladies over there in those tan flight suits?”

Bay looked to her left. There were at least eight women sitting together having breakfast. “Yes. Are they pilots?”

“Not just any pilots,” Gabe said, savoring the salty bacon. Out on patrols, they sweated so much they lost electrolytes. Bacon helped replace the salt in his body. “They’re from a black ops group known as the Black Jaguar Squadron. Been here for four years. It’s an all female Apache helo combat group.”

Eyes widening, Bay said, “That’s terrific. How are they doing in combat?”

Gabe smiled a little between bites. People in the military usually gulped and ran. They didn’t spend time lingering over a meal. She was the same.

“Let’s put it this way. When our comms man calls for Apaches to come and help us out, we don’t care who’s flying them. All we care about is if they can hit the target.” He rolled his shoulders after sitting up to take a breather. “Those gals can nail targets.”

“Not even Hammer and his group are unhappy with them?” As they were unhappy with her.

“Not a peep.” Gabe picked up his mug of coffee. “Hammer and a few of the other guys are worried that you won’t keep up on patrols. Or you’ll cost one of them their lives because they have to protect you instead of knowing you’ll have a gun in the fight like them.”

Nodding, Bay finished off her scrambled eggs. She reached for the strawberry jam and a knife. “That’s fair.”

“Since I’m going to be acclimating you to our team, can you tell me about working with U.S. Army Special Forces over in Iraq?” Gabe was more than a little curious about her background. Bay looked as though she belonged in a hospital. Maybe as a doctor or nurse. Not a woman in a combat zone.

“I ran patrols with them for six months during my last deployment. Most of the time we worked along the Syrian border area with Iraq. Sometimes we came back to the green zone in Baghdad for a rest.” Wrinkling her nose, she said, “It’s a terrible place, Gabe. You can’t trust anyone. They all lie to you. My captain was always pulling out his hair, trying to figure out who was lying and who wasn’t. One group would tell you that another group was al Qaeda. He learned a long time ago not to believe any of them. This was his third deployment and he knew the dance.”

“Did you perform many walking patrols?” Gabe knew the SEALs would be out on foot patrols for up to twelve hours sometimes. If Bay couldn’t, that would pose a helluva problem for all of them.

“I’m fit enough, Gabe. We’d range out on foot for eight to twelve hours. Our team was always moving along the border at night with NVGs on. That was when the Syrian smugglers would try and get past the official highway entrance gate in and out of the two countries. We’d be on patrol from dusk until dawn. Sometimes, depending upon who we ran into, we’d cover fifteen klicks.”

“Any problems with those kinds of physical demands?” Gabe asked, holding her blue gaze. There was such seriousness to her expression as she considered his question. Gabe didn’t want to like her, and he fought it. Hadn’t he had enough woman troubles the past year?

“None. Now,” Bay said, reaching for her coffee, “I treated a lot of heat exhaustion cases, muscle cramps and things like that with my team. You know how you get focused on the mission. You’re chasing the bad guys and you forget to drink water from your CamelBak? Some of the strongest, most fit Special Forces dudes would keel over out there. I learned to carry a lot more IVs in my pack to rehydrate them. Otherwise, we’d be calling in a medevac every time to lift them out.”

Nodding, Gabe knew the hydration problem. SEALs dealt with the same issues. “When I was LPO for my team, I was always on my guys to keep drinking water out on patrol. Everyone forgets. Especially when we’re engaged with the enemy.”

“Yup,” Bay said, smiling a little. She liked looking at Gabe. He was rugged looking, had high cheekbones and she liked his mouth best of all. The corners moved naturally upward and his lips were even and very kissable. His beard was fairly well trimmed, unlike with some of the other guys on the team.

Bay especially liked the keen intelligence she saw in Gabe’s eyes. This guy was no slouch. He had broad, capable shoulders beneath his dusty cammies. She liked his hands, now curved around the mug in front of him. He had long, spare hands, large knuckled, burned dark by the sun, a smattering of dark hair on the backs of them. They were beautiful hands for a man. Her mind turned back to their conversation about desert environs. They were out on the front lines in one of the most inhospitable climates on earth.

“Okay, so you can keep up with us,” Gabe murmured, mulling over her answers. “Are you at all familiar with our patrol tactics?”

She shook her head. “Not at all.”

“Then you need to shadow me. We use the L and diamond formation most of the time, and I’ll show you what that means. When I get a chance, I’ll lead you through what I do and what the team does if we get into a firefight.”

“Sounds good. That’s where I’m weak, Gabe.” Bay held up her hands and laughed a little. “I can cut, operate and stitch with the best of them in a firefight, but I’m an ignoramus when it comes to your patrol methods. I know they aren’t the same ones used by the Special Forces guys.”

He stared at her slender, beautiful hands. Gabe could believe she was a healer. He saw a number of calluses across her palms. That was a good sign because it meant she was in top shape, was carrying fairly heavy loads out on those patrols. “You said your mother was a hill doctor?”

“Yes, my mama, Poppy, is famous for her healing abilities.” Bay dug into a side pocket in her cammies and drew out a ziplock bag that contained family photos. “Here’s my mama.” She placed the photo in front of Gabe. “I grew up going out and collecting herbs with her, starting when I was five years old. She has taught me so much.”

Gabe studied the photo of a woman down on her hands and knees weeding in a huge garden. He could see Bay’s face in her mother’s face. Her mother had blue eyes and crinkly brown hair sticking out from beneath the old straw hat she wore. Gabe noticed her mother wore a skirt and blouse, no shoes on her feet. “You’re lucky to study with her,” he said, handing the photo back to her. When their fingers met, Gabe felt the warmth between them. He walled off any reaction to the grazing touch.

“My pa, Floyd William Thorn, died when he was forty-nine,” she told him, sadness in her tone. She placed a picture of her father before him. “He was a coal miner and got black lung. With the herbs she collected, Mama kept him alive many years longer than he should have lived.” Her voice grew low with emotion. “I miss him so much....”

Gabe picked up the photo, studying the man with a long, unkempt brown-and-silver beard. He wore an old green baseball cap and was proudly standing with a rifle over his shoulder. Bay had his long straight nose and high cheekbones. “I’m sorry you lost him. That’s too young to die.”

Bay took the photo from him and carefully placed it back in the ziplock bag. “He was a good man, Gabe. He taught me how to hunt and we had so much fun together. Pa was always laughing and joking around with us. And he was very kind. There were a number of elderly folks on our mountain who needed help. Pa would go over and chop wood for them, take it to their cabins so they’d have fire to cook with and keep them warm at night during the winter. Each spring, Pa would till their gardens with our mule, Betsy, to help them get in their garden so they’d have food to eat and can in the fall.”

Gabe digested her softly spoken words, saw the grief lingering in her eyes. “He sounds like a helluva good man. Responsible.”

Bay pressed her lips together, feeling the loss of her father. “Hill people stick together. Sometimes we’d go out and hunt deer for these elders. We’d kill one or two, gut and skin them. Then we’d carry them back and spread the meat between these families. Pa believed you took care of your family as well as the people around you.”

“And now you’re taking care of people around you, too. Looks like you have the genes on both sides of your family.” Gabe saw the sadness in Bay’s eyes and found himself wanting to do something to cheer her up. Again, he stopped that desire. This was a dangerous edge to walk with her.

“I love helping people,” Bay said, lifting her head and managing to tuck her sadness away.

“I’m blown away you’re an 18 Delta corpsman. We’ve had SEALs go for that training and wash out. Some made it, but most didn’t. From what I’ve heard, it’s eighteen months of unrelenting hell.”

“It was,” Bay said. “But I loved it. I’d been a corpsman in Iraq and already been under fire, doing my job. By the time I got to 18 Delta, when they’d put you into a situation where you had to work under bullets and explosions going off, it didn’t rattle me one bit. It did a lot of other guys, though. They were really great combat corpsmen, but they couldn’t think through the chaos to stop bleeding or perform lifesaving field operations.”

“What made you so cool, calm and collected under fire?” Gabe asked, going back and starting to spread strawberry jam over six pieces of toast he had piled up at one end of his aluminum tray.

“I don’t know. My mom was always cool as a cucumber when things got tense.”

“You said you were hunting with your dad at an early age? I wonder if the sound of gunfire was something you grew up with.” He chewed on the toast. “I was raised near the woods in Pennsylvania. I was hunting with my father when I was your age. He was a big-time hunter and I got used to being around gunfire.”

“Maybe,” Bay murmured. She watched him enjoy the toast and jam. Gabe was tucking away a lot of food, but she knew these men who were out on long patrols would easily burn through twelve thousand calories. “I find I focus so much on the guy who’s wounded that I don’t hear anything else around me. I’ve been in firefights where the guys on my team would tell me bullets were singing all around me as I was delivering medical aid to a downed soldier, and I wasn’t even aware of it.”

“That’s a handy reaction to have,” Gabe agreed. Inwardly, he began to feel some relief. Bay had the experience and calm that would be needed should they get into a firefight. And it was a given, in their business, they would.

“Why do you think the chief assigned you to me?” Bay wondered, tilting her head and holding his gaze.

Disconcerted, Gabe grinned. “You have a helluva way of getting to the heart of the matter, don’t you?”

“In my business, it’s always the bottom line.” Bay smiled. “I’m the one who is doing the A-B-Cs...airway, breathing, circulation on a guy who’s been shot. I don’t have time to fool around with social niceties.”

Nodding, Gabe reached for the second piece of toast. “I used to be LPO of our team until about six months ago. You probably got assigned to me because the chief trusts me. This is my fourth deployment over here with him and I’m a known quantity.”

“So you were the mother hen for the enlisted guys in your platoon before this?”

Gabe chuckled. “Yeah, I was a real mother hen, for sure.”

“But why aren’t you LPO now?”

He stopped smiling. “A situation came up,” he said gruffly.

“Hmm,” Bay murmured, feeling him retreat. She saw something in his narrowing eyes, a look that warned, back off. Moving her fingers around the warm mug, she said, “Life sometimes kicks us in the head like a mule and it takes time for us to get back up on our feet.”

Her insight stunned Gabe. For a moment, he just stared at her, and then he resumed eating. “I’m okay not being LPO. And Phil, who we call Thor, is doing a good job in my stead.”

“So Chief Hampton figured if he put me with the biggest, baddest mother hen in the platoon, I’d be in good hands.” She grinned.

“You need to ask the chief why he assigned you to me. I’m not in his head.”

Bay finished off her coffee and set the mug aside. “I know I’m in good hands with you, Gabe. You were the only one there in that room who was protecting me against Hammer and his friends.”

“LPOs always are protective of their guys. It comes with the territory. You’re one of us now, and that protection is accorded you, as well.”

Nodding, Bay picked up the last of a few potatoes from her tray and nibbled on them. She figured she’d stepped on a land mine with Gabe. He appeared unhappy for a moment, but then he hid his reaction with a hard, unreadable expression. A game face. Something she saw in all black ops people. “Nothing wrong with being a mother hen. I’m one. And Hammer and his friends are going to find that out big-time as soon as I get my feet under me with this team.”

Gabe would bet on that. Baylee-Ann Thorn was not a weakling in any sense. She came across soft and innocent, but now Gabe was beginning to understand that sweetness could be shown or taken away, depending upon the situation. “It’s the doc’s job to keep the guys well.” And then he remembered the photo of her father. “That was a Winchester rifle your father carrying on his shoulder in that photo you showed me?”

“Yes, a .300 Win Mag rifle.”

“It looked like it.”

“Why?”

“Because in a couple of hours, you’ll be using my Win Mag against Hammer in the shooting competition.”

Shrugging, Bay smiled a little. “So?”

“So you know how to use one.”

“My pa used the civilian variety of Win Mag to bag deer and other animals. The type you guys use for sniping is a military grade and not something I’m familiar with.”

“Just the cartridge is different. Stocks are made out of fiberglass because it’s lighter than wood.” He studied her hard for a moment. “When did your father start training you to use the Win Mag?”

“When I was thirteen.”

The innocent look she gave him made him grin. “So you’ve been using a Win Mag for five years before you joined the Navy? And in that time, you were using it to bring down big game at fourteen hundred yards?”

“Yes.”

Gabe sat up. “Has anyone ever accused you of being the mistress of understatement?”

She wiped her mouth with the paper napkin, wadded it up and dropped onto her tray. “A few times.” Bay saw that dark, accessing look of his, felt it surround her. It was an intense focus a hunter would have.

“That Win Mag has a body-jarring recoil to it when it’s fired,” he warned her. It would take a shoulder off a person if he didn’t realize the kick of the rifle and physically compensate for that violent recoil. He wondered how she was able to handle such a weapon at such a young age.

“Oh, Pa warned me,” Bay chuckled. Pushing her fingers through her curly brown hair, she said, “The first time I fired it, it knocked me on my behind. My pa never laughed so hard, and neither did I. He’d warned me beforehand about its recoil, but until you actually fire it, you don’t have a clue.”

Her laughter was like thick, dark honey across his wounded heart. Gabe had no defense against it. Her eyes danced with mirth. It lifted him, for no accountable reason. “Well,” he growled, pushing the tray aside, “Hammer’s in a lot of trouble, then.”

“Ohh,” Bay murmured, “I don’t think so.”

Gabe studied her. “Then you really don’t need a spotter. You’ve never worked with one and you’re hitting your target at fourteen hundred yards.” That blew him away.

“My pa never called himself a spotter. He taught me about windage, wind direction, humidity and so on. I could sure use your help, Gabe. This is dry air. There’s no humidity. I’m not used to firing in this kind of environment. If you could help me dial it in, I’d be grateful.”

How could he refuse her? “Hammer is going to get his sails trimmed.”

“All I want to do is give a good accounting of myself. Maybe then he’ll get serious about me being responsible regarding my job with your platoon.”

Gabe smiled wryly, picked up his tray and rose to his full six feet. Her heart opened as she regarded him standing there, waiting for her. There was an intense, quiet power around him, like that of a coiled copperhead ready to strike. She didn’t see this same kind of tension in the other SEALs, although they all possessed it, more or less.

Gabe was a leader; there was no doubt. And she knew the men respected him. Why wasn’t he LPO? Well, for whatever reason, Bay found herself thanking the Lord for having Chief Hampton assign her to this SEAL. He was trustworthy. And her life would be in his hands, quite literally.

Easing off the bench, Bay picked up her tray and followed Gabe to where they placed their empty trays. She noticed the women stuck together at the various benches. A number of the SEALs from Alpha were all sitting together and eating, Hammer among them. When he spotted her across the large packed room, he gave her a glare. She ignored it.